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by Kim
It’s normal to feel a little stressed at work from time to time. However, for some employees, this workplace stress becomes all-consuming and can begin to affect their daily life. In time, this can leave workers feeling burnt out, exhausted, or depressed.
However, many people may not consider seeing a psychologist for work-related issues. Yet, since we spend most of our time working – (approximately 90,000 hours over our lifetime) – work problems are bound to come up and interfere with our daily life at some point.
What makes a job stressful?
Workplace stress and anxiety may be caused by events such as job losses, restructures, bullying, takeovers, or even just daily work hassles that build-up, like a heavy workload or tight deadlines to meet.
According to WorkSafe, the most at-risk occupations for mental health issues include:
- Defence force members, firefighters and police
- School teachers
- Health and welfare support workers
To spot whether you are affected by workplace burnout, read our recent post here on the topic or take our stress test here.
How a work psychologist can help with workplace stress
Work psychologists are well-placed to teach you the practical skills that can help you to manage workplace stress or any negative emotions surrounding your job environment. These strategies tailored around your specific workplace issues, can help build up your resilience by providing healthier coping skills, allowing you to bounce back easier.
Tips to help relieve workplace stress
– Be sure to manage your time efficiently
An unfinished to-do list is frustrating but sometimes it’s not us – it’s the list. When it comes to your next work project, try this: instead of adding the whole project to your to-do list, think about the scale of the project, then prioritise the most crucial elements. Divide these into smaller, manageable tasks that can be more easily completed by the end of your working day. Using this strategy and breaking tasks down, can help you to complete projects on time and error-free, and what’s more, you won’t be completely exhausted when it’s done!
– Set clear boundaries
Nowadays, it’s all too easy for work to follow us home and our devices, such as a phone, can keep us chained to the office at all hours. It’s time to set some boundaries. If a phone call or email comes in during your journey home or while you are relaxing, try not to answer it if you can. Another tip is to remove your work email from your mobile (if possible) or have a separate work phone that you can simply switch off at the end of the day. Doing this gives you a chance to recharge and will bring you more energy and focus when it’s time to go back to work.
– Find a positive response
While we cannot eliminate workplace stress completely, we do have control over how we respond to it. Find healthy ways to relax and unwind after a stressful, hard day on the job. Don’t resort to unhealthy coping strategies such as binging on junk food or over drinking to allay your stress and anxiety. Do whatever relaxes you, whether that is exercise, spending time with your friends and family, or taking a peaceful bath. The key is to engage in healthy activities that make you feel relaxed and refocused to help release any built-up tension.
Reaching out
Seeing a psychologist can help you to cope with workplace stress and problems that you may face throughout your career. Learning strategies to add to your toolkit means that you will be placed to deal with any challenges that the workplace environment may bring.
At Positive Mind Works, we have several psychologists on our team who are highly experienced in workplace issues. For example, PMW psychologist Yvonne specialises solely in the world of work, supporting organisations and individuals to improve their wellbeing, satisfaction, and performance at work. Yvonne’s goal is to help clients clearly define and clarify work issues and then develop a practical way forward.
Yvonne’s experience and areas of interest include:
- Personal, professional and leadership assessment and development
- Managing and coping with job and career change
- Navigating workplace conflict, bullying, and toxic work behaviour
- Identifying and managing stress at work
- Creating work/life balance
We also partner with several companies to provide Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP). To learn more about EAP counselling, click here.
For further information about work counselling, contact our reception on 1800 327 477 (in Australia) or 0800 327 477 (in NZ) or click here to book.
